Although prescription drugs offer tremendous health benefits, significant improvement in our system of[unreadable] prescribing will be required before these benefits can be achieved. Electronic prescribing (e-prescribing)[unreadable] represents an important means of promoting better prescribing, through both increased efficiency in the[unreadable] prescribing process and better outcomes of medical therapy. Understanding whether e-prescribing systems[unreadable] can effect the desired changes requires detailed study of the prescribing system, from the prescriber encounter[unreadable] with the patient through the process of electronic prescribing and on to the clinical outcomes experienced by[unreadable] patients.[unreadable] Our proposed research will evaluate the full spectrum of e-prescribing. We have an active partnership[unreadable] with the makers of an office-based e-prescribing system that is already in widespread use and with multiple[unreadable] insurance companies and public programs who will provide claims data. The proposed research will proceed[unreadable] in three phases. In the first phase, we will use data from the e-prescribing system to evaluate physician[unreadable] responses to decision support interventions and alerts. For the second phase, we will bring together experts on[unreadable] information technology and experienced survey researchers to develop a qualitative study demonstrating the[unreadable] impact of e-prescribing on prescribing processes and outpatient workflow, including a large-scale survey to[unreadable] develop a detailed understanding of how e-prescribing can be integrated into medical practice. The third[unreadable] phase of the research will draw on decades of experience studying large medical databases to evaluate[unreadable] prescribing decisions and clinical outcomes when e-prescribing is initiated. We will link the e-prescriptions[unreadable] issued to patients with the pharmacy claims for those patients and will generate a comprehensive dataset to[unreadable] evaluate the true clinical impact of e-prescribing.[unreadable] Although the public interest in e-prescribing is growing, including recent proposals to provide eprescribing[unreadable] systems to all physicians, the data on how e-prescribing systems are used and what impact they[unreadable] actually have on prescribing processes and outcomes are still quite limited. The findings of this research will[unreadable] provide important lessons for clinicians, researchers, insurers, policy-makers, patients, and all those with an[unreadable] interest in improving the use of prescription drugs.